Free The Year We Were Famous by Carole Estby Dagg Page A

wouldn't have to argue in front of an audience, I pulled Ma outside the station. "Ma, that shortcut could be treacherous."
    "Here I come up with an idea to save half a day and you're afraid to risk it. You're as cautious as your pa." She started to fill her canteen at the station's water pump.
    Filled with misgivings, I followed Ma toward Minidoka, past boulders and dry sage and gradually downward through loose rock. After an hour or so, we dead-ended at a sheer drop-off. We followed the cleft eastward, and just as we thought we had reached the end, the cleft took a sharp bend to the north, opposite of the direction we wanted to go. I dropped my bag and took out the compass Erick had given me, but poked it away again in disgust.
    "Compass doesn't do much good unless you have wings to fly." I ran a finger around my collar where sweat had glued it to my neck.
    Ma looked furtively at me as if she expected me to add a rebuke for not following my advice. With angelic self-restraint, I said nothing.
    We'd been walking another hour when Ma blurted, "Talk! Even if it's to tell me we shouldn't have taken the shortcut."
    "I guess we shouldn't have taken the shortcut! Satisfied?"
    "I don't know how you came to be so much like Pa," she said. "He can get by a whole day on ten words." As she wiped her forehead with the back of a sleeve, she looked at me—really looked—as if I were a stranger she'd just met and was taking the measure of.
    I didn't look much like Pa except for height. I didn't look that much like Ma, either, except for the gap between my two front teeth. Arthur had also inherited the gap, which he claimed helped him win spitting contests. I found the gap to be of no value whatsoever, except to reassure myself that I was not a foundling.
    Although I didn't look like Pa, everyone said Pa was the one I took after. Like him, I would listen and gauge the other person's slant on things so I wouldn't say anything to rile them up. Since I could usually see both sides of an argument, I spent most of my time listening on the fence, a regular mugwump with my "mug" on one side of the fence and my "wump" on the other.
    "If you wanted talk you should have taken Ida," I said, reaching over my shoulder to peel my sweaty shirtwaist from my back.
    "Ida wouldn't have lasted an hour in this heat," Ma said. "At least you're still here."
    "
Ja,
well," I answered, surprised by the compliment. "I suppose my doggedness is just another way I'm like Pa."
    "
Ja,
well. You might recall that your Pa didn't want us to take this trip. Yet here you are, with me." Ma unbuttoned the first three buttons on her shirtwaist and picked up her bag, ready to walk again. "You might just be more like me than you think."
    Heaven forbid,
I thought.
    Taking advantage of the cooler air at night, we kept walking as the stars and a sliver of moon came out. We were tired, and sharp rocks made for unsteady walking. When Ma slipped on loose rock, she threw out a hand to break her fall. She held up her left arm, watching blood drip down and soak into her sleeve. "That blood will stain if we don't wash it out right away," she said.
    "I'm not wasting water on your sleeve," I said as I rinsed the sharp slash on her hand with a stingy trickle of water from the canteen. I painted on iodine, wrapped my bandanna around her palm, and helped her to a sip from the canteen. I held my own thimbleful of water in my mouth so long, there was nothing left to swallow.
    Even though we had not yet made it to shelter, Ma's hand was an excuse to stop for the night. The volcanic rocks around us were as sharp as broken glass, so I mounded brush into a mattress and we lay down under the stars for the first time on our trip. With no airborne dust or moisture to dilute the starlight, the sky blossomed with more stars, brighter stars, than I had ever seen before. I tried to think of them as our guardian angels so I could relax, but sleep was a long time coming.
June 11, 1896 – Day 37